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Can dual citizenship ease Ukraine's demographic strain?
Summary
A retrospective on the days around 19 June 2025, when Ukraine's parliament moved on multiple citizenship as Russian strikes on Kyiv continued to kill civilians.
Could allowing Ukrainians to hold more than one passport help a country losing people to war? That was the question raised by a vote in the days leading up to 19 June 2025.
On 18 June 2025, the parliament of Ukraine approved a law permitting multiple citizenship. As reported at the time, the aim was to ease a demographic crisis caused by the Russian invasion.
A measure shaped by war
The law was passed against a grim backdrop. On 17 June 2025, Russian forces launched a total of 440 drones and 32 missiles at Kyiv, damaging buildings and public facilities. Twenty-eight people were killed and dozens more wounded.
The same day, Russia's Ministry of Defence said its air defence units had intercepted and destroyed 147 Ukrainian drones overnight.
What the vote signalled
The two developments sat side by side: a legislature working on the long-term question of how to keep Ukrainians connected to their country, and a capital absorbing one of the heavy attacks of that week. The citizenship law was presented as a response to population loss driven by the invasion, and the strikes on Kyiv showed the conditions in which parliament was making that choice.
For international readers, the episode is a reminder that the war was being fought on legal and demographic fronts as well as military ones, even as civilians in the capital faced attacks from the air.
